The First Time

by Joy Fielding

  It was time.

  “Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Mattie asked. “Do you have any idea how much joy you’ve brought to my life?”

  “Do you have any idea how much you’ve brought to mine?” he asked in return.

  The doorbell rang.

  “It’s Lisa,” Mattie said, as Aurora headed for the door, the dog bounding down the steps from upstairs and barking at her feet.

  “How’s Mattie doing today?” Mattie heard Lisa ask as Jake walked into the hall to greet her.

  “Seems a little down,” she heard Jake say. “Maybe I shouldn’t be going out.”

  “Nonsense,” Mattie spat out, the effort resulting in a terrible series of spasms that only abated after Jake promised not to alter his plans. “You look great,” Mattie said to Lisa, admiring her friend’s short new hairdo, wondering how she’d look with that kind of severe geometrical cut, trying to remember the last time she’d been to a hairdresser’s salon.

  “Thank you,” Lisa said, reaching into her black doctor’s bag and removing the apparatus for measuring Mattie’s blood pressure, strapping it around Mattie’s arm, as if this were as normal as shaking hands. “You’re looking pretty good yourself.”

  “Thank you,” Mattie said. No point in arguing. She weighed less than a hundred pounds, her skin was so fine it was almost transparent, and her body was twisted in on itself like a pretzel. Still, everyone insisted on telling her she was beautiful, as if her condition had robbed her of her ability to judge for herself, to discriminate between what was and what one wished it to be. “Thank you,” Mattie said again. Why not believe she was still beautiful? What harm was there in pretending?

  “I was talking to Stephanie and Pam, and we were thinking we’d like to have a little party next month. How’s October twelfth sound to you?”

  “Sounds great,” Jake answered for her.

  “Great,” Lisa said, listening to the sound of Mattie’s blood as it pulsed through her veins. “I’ll tell the others. Let you know the time and place.” She dropped the stethoscope into her lap, loosened the tight wrap from Mattie’s arm. “Everything sounds okay here,” she said, although her eyes said otherwise. “So, have you heard the latest about Stephanie’s ex?” Mattie shook her head. “You know he started making custody noises when he found out about Enoch.”

  “I think I’ll leave you two alone while I finish up a couple of things in my office,” Jake said, kissing Mattie on the forehead before he left the room.

  Lisa continued without blinking an eye. “Well, Stephanie had the shithead followed. Turned out the turd has been leading something of a double life.”

  Mattie listened for the next forty-five minutes as Lisa filled her in on all the salient and salacious details, catching her up on all the latest gossip involving both people Mattie knew and those she didn’t. She learned who was dating whom in the celebrity world, which new movies lived up to their hype and which disappointed terribly, what actresses had implants, and who of Hollywood’s aging elite had recently undergone cosmetic surgery.

  “Trust me,” Lisa intoned knowingly. “Any woman over forty who doesn’t have wrinkles has had a facelift.”

  Mattie smiled, knowing she wouldn’t live to have the luxury of such petty concerns. What she wouldn’t give to have a few wrinkles! What she wouldn’t give to turn into a wizened old prune.

  “ Apparently, there’s a great new book out on tape. I forget the name,” Lisa was saying, “but I wrote it down somewhere, and I’m going to bring it over on my next visit. Is there anything else you need?” she asked, checking her watch as Mattie glanced toward the clocks on the far wall. 6:05 or 6:07. Take your pick.

  Either way, it was time, Mattie thought.

  “I need you to call my mother,” she said, the words emerging slowly but clearly. “I need you to ask her to come over. Tonight.”

  Lisa immediately located Mattie’s address book in the drawer by the phone and called Mattie’s mother. “She’ll be here in an hour,” Lisa said, hanging up the phone.

  “Who’ll be here in an hour?” Kim asked, coming into the kitchen, showered and changed, her long hair hanging loose under her Chicago Cubs cap.

  “Off to Wrigley Field?” Lisa asked.

  “This is definitely our year,” Kim said with a laugh. “Who’ll be here in an hour?” she repeated.

  “Your grandmother.”

  “Grandma Viv? Why?” A look of concern flashed through Kim’s blue eyes.

  “Ready to go?” Jake asked, joining the women in the kitchen.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go,” Kim said.

  “Something wrong?” Jake asked.

  “Mattie’s mother’s coming over,” Lisa said.

  “That’s great. What’s the problem, Kimmy?”

  “Mom?” Kim asked. “Is there a problem?”

  Mattie lifted her face to her husband and child, her eyes a greedy camera lens, snapping picture after picture, her mind racing back through time, uncovering memory after memory—the first time she’d seen Jake, the first time they’d made love, the first time she’d held her beautiful baby girl in her arms. “I love you both so much,” she said clearly. “Please always remember how much I love you.”

  “We love you too,” Jake said softly, kissing Mattie gently on the lips. “We won’t be late.”

  “You’re a wonderful man, Jake Hart,” Mattie whispered in his ear, savoring his taste, his smell, his touch.

  Kim approached, bent forward, folding her mother in her arms, as if she were the mother, Mattie the child.

  “Be patient with your father,” Mattie said before her child had a chance to speak. “Please try to accept whatever makes him happy.”

  Kim stared directly into her mother’s eyes. As if she understood. As if she knew. “You’re the best mother anybody could ever have,” she said so softly only Mattie could hear.

  “My beautiful baby.” Mattie pressed her face into her daughter’s hair, memorizing its texture, its feel against her skin. “Go now, sweetie,” she urged gently. “It’s time.”

  “I love you,” Kim said.

  “I love you,” Jake repeated.

  I love you, Mattie called silently after them, watching them disappear, their images imprinted forever on her soul. Take care of each other.

  “You say something, Mrs. Hart?” Aurora asked.

  Mattie shook her head as Aurora approached with a bowl of freshly made soup.

  “Chicken noodle. Very good for you.” Aurora advanced a spoonful toward Mattie.

  “I’ll do that, Aurora,” Lisa said, lifting the bowl from Aurora’s hands. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll stay with Mattie until her mother gets here.”

  “You sure?” Aurora hesitated, looked toward Mattie.

  “You go,” Mattie told her. “And thanks, Aurora. Thanks for everything.”

  “I see you tomorrow.”

  “Good-bye,” Mattie said, watching her leave. Another picture for her soul’s scrapbook.

  “Soup’s on,” Lisa said when they were alone, lifting the spoon to Mattie’s lips. “Smells very good.”

  “Thank you,” Mattie said, opening her mouth like a baby bird, feeling the warm tickle of the liquid as it slid down her throat. “Thank you for everything.”

  “Don’t talk. Eat.”

  Mattie allowed Lisa to spoon her the remaining contents of the bowl, saying nothing until not a drop was left.

  “Somebody was hungry,” Lisa observed, her lips struggling valiantly with a smile.

  “You’re a good friend,” Mattie said.

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” Lisa reminded her. “We’ve been friends for a long time. It’s got to be, what—over thirty years?”

  “Thirty-three,” Mattie qualified. Then, after a moment’s careful thought, “Do you remember the first time we met?”

  Lisa took a moment of her own. “No.” She shook her head guiltily. “Do you?”

  Mattie smiled. “No.”

  They bo
th laughed.

  “I just remember you were always there,” Mattie said simply.

  “I love you,” Lisa said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Mattie knew. “I love you too,” she said.

  • • •

  “Thanks for coming,” Mattie told her mother. It was obvious her mother had taken considerable effort with her appearance. She was wearing a lavender-colored blouse tucked into neat gray trousers, and a hint of color was brushed across lips that were curled into an uneasy smile.

  “How are you feeling?” her mother asked, looking restlessly around Mattie’s bedroom before fixing on the small dog curled up against Mattie’s feet on the bed. “You’re looking well.”

  “Thank you. So do you.”

  Her mother patted her hair with a self-conscious hand. “George seems to have found a friend.”

  “I think he likes it here.”

  Her mother reached out and petted the puppy’s back. Immediately, the dog rolled over, exposing his stomach, his front paws making small arcs in the air, beckoning her closer, asking for more. How easily he makes himself understood, Mattie thought, watching her mother gently rub the puppy’s delicate underside. How effortlessly he makes his wishes clear. “It was nice seeing Lisa again,” Viv was saying. “It’s amazing. She has the exact same face she had when she was ten years old.”

  “She never changes,” Mattie agreed, realizing how comforting this was.

  “Hard to picture her as a successful doctor.”

  “It’s all she ever wanted to be,” Mattie said, remembering. “When Lisa played doctor, she really meant it.”

  Her mother laughed. “You’re sounding so much better,” she said with obvious relief. “Your voice is nice and strong.”

  “It comes and goes,” Mattie told her.

  “So it’s important not to give up, not to lose hope.”

  “There is no hope, Mother,” Mattie said, as gently as she could. Her mother stiffened, backing away from the bed, retreating to the window. She stared without focus at the growing darkness.

  “The days are getting shorter.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Be closing the pool soon, I guess.”

  “Another few weeks.”

  “Kim says she’s become quite the little swimmer.”

  “Kim will do well at whatever she sets her mind to.”

  “Yes, she will,” Mattie’s mother agreed.

  “You’ll look out for her, won’t you? You’ll make sure she’s all right?”

  Silence.

  “Mother—”

  “Of course I’ll look out for her.”

  “She loves you very much.”

  Mattie’s mother looked toward the ceiling, her chin quivering, her lower lip swallowing the one on top. “Did you see the picture she took of me with all my dogs?”

  “It’s a beautiful picture,” Mattie said.

  “I think she has a real talent. I think it’s something she might consider pursuing.”

  Mattie smiled sadly. “I think you need to listen to me now.”

  “I think you need to sleep for a while,” her mother insisted. “You’re tired. A little rest will do you a world of good.”

  “Mother, please, listen to me. It’s time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Mother. You promised.”

  Silence.

  Then, “What is it you want me to do?”

  Mattie closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, releasing a deep breath of air. She opened her eyes, looked toward the bathroom. “The bottle of morphine is in the medicine cabinet. I need you to grind up twenty pills and mix them with water, feed them to me a little bit at a time, until I’ve swallowed them all.”

  Her mother gasped, held her breath, said nothing.

  “Then maybe you could just sit with me until I fall asleep. Would you do that?”

  Her mother nodded slowly, her teeth chattering, as if she were cold. “In the medicine cabinet?”

  “There’s a spoon by the sink. And a glass,” Mattie called after her, although her voice was fading. She said a silent prayer, although no words formed, even in her head. She was doing the right thing.

  The time for hesitating’s through.

  It was time.

  And suddenly Mattie’s mother was standing at the foot of the bed, the bottle of morphine in one hand, the glass of water in the other. “The spoon,” Mattie reminded her.

  “Oh, yes.” Viv put the glass of water and the bottle of pills on the nightstand next to Mattie. Then she walked back to the bathroom, her movements slow yet jagged, like an automaton. She retrieved the spoon, returned even more slowly to the bed, as if she were a wind-up toy taking its last awkward steps.

  “It’s all right,” Mattie told her. “You’ll put everything back where it was in a few minutes. No one will ever know.”

  “What will I tell them? What will I tell Jake and Kim when they get home?”

  “The truth—that I’m fine, that I’m asleep.”

  “I don’t think I can do this.” Viv’s hands were trembling so badly, she had to lock the spoon between both palms to secure it.

  She looks almost as if she’s praying, Mattie thought. “You can do it,” she insisted. “You have to.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”

  “Damn it, Mom. You did it for your animals. You understood about not letting them suffer.”

  “This is different,” her mother pleaded. “You’re my flesh and blood. I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can,” Mattie insisted, her eyes forcing her mother to look at her, directing her to the night table beside her bed, instructing her hands to lay down the spoon and open the bottle of morphine tablets.

  “I know I wasn’t a very good mother, Martha,” her mother said, tears accenting the deep red blotches staining her cheeks. “I know what a disappointment I’ve been for you.”

  “Don’t disappoint me now.”

  “Please forgive me.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay.”

  “Forgive me,” her mother repeated, pulling away from Mattie, backing away from the bed. “But I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Mom?”

  “I can’t. I’m so sorry, Martha. I just can’t.”

  “No!” Mattie cried as her mother fled the room. “No, you can’t leave me. You can’t do this. Please. Please, come back. Come back. You have to help me. You have to help me. Please, Mother, come back. Come back.”

  Mattie heard the front door open and close shut with a terrible finality.

  Her mother was gone.

  “No!” Mattie screamed. “No! You can’t go. You can’t leave. You have to help me. You have to help me.”

  And then she was coughing and gasping for air, flailing about on the bed like a fish flopping around on the bottom of a fisherman’s boat, her body a series of useless twitches, as the dog barked with growing alarm at her side. “Somebody help me,” Mattie shouted at the empty house. “Please, somebody, help me.”

  Mattie hurled herself toward the end table, knocking over the glass of water and the bottle of pills, watching them bounce to the floor, her own body tumbling after them, as she landed with a sickening thud on her left shoulder, the taste of the carpet filling her mouth and nose, the dog whimpering by her side.

  Mattie lay that way for what felt like an eternity, as the air slowly returned to her lungs. The dog lay beside her throbbing shoulder, every so often licking the side of her face with his eager tongue. The morphine lay less than two feet from her nose, but she couldn’t reach it. Even if she could, what good would it do her if she couldn’t open the bottle? Mattie looked toward the window at the darkness beyond, willing it inside the room, praying for it to wash over her, end her suffering once and for all. Then she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, approaching, drawing nearer.

  She opened h
er eyes.

  “Oh, God, Martha,” her mother cried, gathering Mattie into her arms, rocking her back and forth like a baby. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You came back,” Mattie whispered. “You didn’t leave me.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I opened the front door. I heard you crying. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t,” her mother said, her breath trembling into the space between them. “Let’s get you back in bed,” she said, somehow managing to get Mattie off the floor, to lift her back into her bed.

  She arranged the pillows at Mattie’s head, gathered the blankets around her, then slowly, wordlessly, retrieved the empty glass from the floor and carried it into the bathroom. Mattie heard the water rushing from the tap, watched her mother’s slow trek back across the room, the glass of water in her hand. She put the glass on the night table beside the bed, then bent to the floor, secured the bottle of pills, opened it, and quickly crushed twenty pills into the waiting spoon, dissolving them in the water. Then she cradled Mattie’s head in her arms and brought the glass to Mattie’s lips, gently guiding the solution into Mattie’s mouth.

  It tasted bitter, and Mattie had to fight to keep it down. The taste of darkness, she thought, embracing it. Slowly, determinedly, she watched the liquid drain from the glass until there was nothing left. “Thank you,” she whispered as her mother returned the glass to the night table, then fitted her body awkwardly around Mattie’s, laying Mattie’s head against the loud banging of her heart.

  “I love you, Mattie,” her mother said.

  Mattie closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that her mother would stay with her until she fell asleep. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me that,” she said.

  For a while Mattie lay still in her mother’s arms, but gradually she felt the air around her start to swirl, felt the loosening of her arms and legs as they began to unfold and straighten. Her fingers and toes stretched and flexed, and soon her hands were swooping out in front of her, her legs kicking from behind. She was swimming, Mattie thought with a silent laugh, swimming out of darkness toward the light, her mother watching after her, ensuring her safe passage.

  Mattie thought of Jake and of Kim, how beautiful they were, how much she loved them. She threw both of them silent kisses and then slipped quietly behind a cloud and disappeared.